


Ashes to Ashes.

by witchbreed



Category: Avengers, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, post-infinity war blues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 03:10:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14463714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchbreed/pseuds/witchbreed





	Ashes to Ashes.

"Oh my God", he had heard himself saying, clutching Vision's lifeless body, his knees too weak to force themselves up.

He was gone. Bucky was gone. Thanos was gone. There was nothing - there was nothing left. The others couldn't speak. It hadn't dawned on them yet, the magnitude of the situation.

Or perhaps it had.

Perhaps it was just impossible for them to process it.

"Where...where is Sam?" he asked, looking through the faces of the ones left behind, looking for that familiarity he had come to love; a sliver of hope in that ever-engulfing darkness growing in his chest at every passing second.

His eyes met with Rhodey. His lower lip trembled. "I'm sorry."

_Oh my God_.

The silence echoed past the grounds of Wakanda, as men and women struggled to understand what had happened, left with nothing but a pile of dust at their footsteps. M'Baku gathered what was left of his men, and Okoye - still shocked, speechless, the hand stained by T'Challa's aches trembling with a life of its own - ran to the royal palace, searching for a sign of W'Kabi, Shuri, Queen Ramonda, Nakia. _Anyone_.

"We need to gather our forces", "let's take the fight to him", "there has to be a way to reverse this" sang the chorus to each other without much rhyme or reason, struggling to find themselves with a solution. The world was in chaos - hell, the universe probably - but that didn't mean their work was done.

Perhaps it should be.

All this fighting, all this death...

"Are you alright? Steve?" Natasha asked. She extended him a hand, staying behind while the others prepared to return to the palace.

"You can go, I...need a moment", he said.

"I'm here for you, if you need anything", she assured.

"Thanks, Nat", he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I'll be fine."

But that was a lie. He knew that was a lie. She knew that was a lie. Still, one is allowed to one's mourning, and so she left him, surrounded by the ashes of those he used to call friends - of those he loved, of those taken from him.

And Steve cried.

For the first time since he could remember; so long he thought his tearducts had dried up. He cried and screamed and pounded the ground and begged - begged, for whatever was listening, to whoever was out there, for...something. For them to go back? For him to go with them?

He didn't know.

All he knew was that he'd lost them. Sam; Bucky, again.

A painful reminder that, sometimes, surviving was a fate worse than death.


End file.
